


Home Is A Sewn-In Initial

by CantStopImagining



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 08:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6276589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CantStopImagining/pseuds/CantStopImagining
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The initials are buried in the thick knit, close to her heart, and it feels like a secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Is A Sewn-In Initial

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure what prompted this - it was one of those things I just let run its course. I took some creative liberties... ;)

There isn’t anything extraordinary about Patsy’s scarf; it’s the same uniform regulated one everybody at Nonnatus has. It was probably knitted by one of the nuns. It has Patsy’s initials in it, and it smells of Patsy's perfume, and Delia wraps it around her neck and it feels like she’s carrying her with her. It’s like being hugged from behind by her, all day long. The initials are buried in the thick knit, close to her heart, and it feels like a secret; she knows it’s there, that it belongs to her, that it’s a sign of _them_ that she gets to wear it, but nobody else need know.

Patsy likens it to when the girls at her school traded blazer pins with the boys they were going steady with. Delia likes that; she likes the idea that this makes her hers, always, in some obvious material way.

Their first night together (their only night together, as it turns out), she ends up in Patsy’s pyjama top. It trails halfway down her thighs, the worn cotton sleeves rolled up to free her hands. It smells like whisky and smoke. The intimacy of it covering her bare body, the feel of it soft against her flesh in places Patsy’s hands have roamed only moments before, makes her feel even more special. She tucks her head into the gap between Patsy’s jaw and her shoulder, and snuggles closer to her, pressing her lips gently to the side of her face. They fall asleep interlocked together, and when she wakes, alone in the bed and to the smell of coffee brewing, she buries deeper into the shirt, not wanting to take it off.

When they rush her away to hospital, and everything’s dark and hazy and she doesn’t know her own name, Patsy’s scarf is left in the road.

The things she has in Wales don’t feel like hers, and her mam never sends for her belongings. She re-learns everything; who she is, where she lives, who her family is, the alphabet, how to cook, how to nurse… the list goes on too long. Patsy isn’t there for her to learn about. She’s a thought trapped in the back of a cloudy brain. She’s a letter that Delia never gets to read. She’s a name that appears on the tip of her tongue but that doesn’t make sense.

She’s a soft knit cardigan, buried in the back of a closet with the initials PM sewn into the collar, that Delia’s mother tuts over and sends back to London. 

She comes back to Delia in a flash of red hair and laughter, and pink lips and soft, gentle hands and wide eyes the colour of the ocean. She’s the smell of coffee and bleach on a sunny day. It comes all at once, a tidal wave of emotion that gets caught in the back of her throat, along with a name, and an aching in her heart. 

As soon as she remembers her, she’s distraught at not having anything of hers. She doesn’t have photographs or letters or a christmas card, or a ring on a solid chain around her neck that she knows she _ought_ to have. She doesn’t have a pyjama top to sleep in, or a scarf to keep her warm, or a coat that she _just had to have_ , wrapped up with a sheepish smile and a blush that she remembers so well it brings tears to her eyes.

The first time she sees her, again, she’s dressed in green. An olive over coat that Delia has never seen before. Delia feels stiff and alien in her bright red coat, the one her mam had insisted on buying her for London. For a fleeting, stupid moment she panics, thinks _what if she won’t recognise me? What if I’ve changed too much?_

In the warmth of a coffee shop, her hand fits around Delia’s like a glove. She doesn’t pull away.

She doesn’t take anything of Patsy’s, when she reluctantly has to leave, but she wraps her own grey scarf around Patsy’s neck. Delia thinks of it keeping her warm whilst she’s back in Wales. 

The thread isn't broken. They’re still attached even if they’re miles and miles apart.

When they meet, months later, and she’s given a clean bill of health, it’s bittersweet because it’s also goodbye. They get a quiet few minutes upstairs before dinner. Patsy tries to give her back the scarf, her hands trembling and her jaw tight, trying to hold in tears. Trying not to ruin her make-up. Delia doesn’t want the scarf. She presses a kiss to the grey wool, wishing it was Patsy’s lips.

Patsy wears green (again). Her hair is perfectly styled and her make-up isn’t the same as her daily routine. She sits at the dinner table and tries not to look like her life is about to fall apart (again).

(It doesn’t).

Delia goes back to Wales with Patsy’s mother’s mirror in her pocket, and a promise of returning.

Two months later, she arrives with two small suitcases of clothes; a handful of dresses, two warm cardigans, two jumpers, one coat, a few pairs of shoes. She realises too late that she doesn’t have pyjamas.

“Nevermind,” Patsy says, grinning, “you can have some of mine. I’ve plenty.”


End file.
